Chicago - A message from the station manager

The [Thursday] Papers

By Steve Rhodes

“Basically everywhere in the U.S. east of the Rockies – in Massachusetts and in Chicago and in Texas – people seem to believe that the classic division of four seasons doesn’t apply,” Robinson Meyer wrote for the Atlantic last month.

“Our state actually has 12 seasons,” they say. What are they? First, there’s Winter, as you might expect. But then Winter becomes Fool’s Spring and Second Winter. Then there’s the Pollening, which precedes Actual Spring. And while Summer follows, it’s only an entrée to Hell’s Front Porch.

Sometimes all of that seems to happen on the same day. Which isn’t to use the passive voice; it’s not just happening; we made it happen.

“July is shaping up to be the warmest July on record – and probably the warmest month ever measured, since July is the hottest month of the year,” Zeke Hausfather, a climate scientist at Berkeley Earth, told me. “Obviously, we still have half the month to go. But so far, it’s on track.” (Since most of the planet’s land surface is north of the equator, and since land heats up faster than the ocean, the Northern Hemisphere’s summers are the hottest months of the year for the whole planet.)
If that mark is realized, then two months in a row will be the hottest of their type ever measured, since last month was the hottest June ever recorded. And the odds are good that 2019 will be the second-warmest year on record, Hausfather told me. Either way, it’s a near-certainty that the past six years, including this one, will be the hottest six years ever measured.

Well, the data is in and housedad was right:
“July was the hottest month measured on Earth since records began in 1880, the latest in a long line of peaks that scientists say backs up predictions for man-made climate change,” AP reports.
“Because July is generally the warmest month on the calendar, meteorologists say this means it also set a new all-time monthly record for the past 140 years.”
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We are the arrogant ass. We’ve killed us.

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Can’t wait for Donald Trump to retweet Nelson Otto of Jefferson City, Missouri, who thinks climate change is just a recurring media narrative that belies the truth. What’s so interesting to me about Otto’s argument – which I present as an exemplar of what and how Trump Country thinks – is that in his effort to defeat the experts he so distrusts, he cites someone he makes sure we know is a Ph.D, climatologist and former NASA scientist. So credentials mean something to him – just as they do to Trump, a zealous credentialist who is, for example, enthralled with people who have Ivy League degrees.
What Otto doesn’t tell readers is that “Spencer is a signatory to ‘An Evangelical Declaration on Global Warming,’ which states that ‘We believe Earth and its ecosystems – created by God’s intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence – are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting, admirably suited for human flourishing, and displaying His glory. Earth’s climate system is no exception. Recent global warming is one of many natural cycles of warming and cooling in geologic history.'”
No science can defeat that argument.
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Similarly, Otto is a Chicago violence concern troll who somehow is up on the latest doings here. I wonder where he gets his news from.
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Edit Desk
“A north suburban man has been charged with a hate crime for attacking a motorcyclist displaying a Mexican flag with an ice pick Wednesday in unincorporated Gurnee,” the Sun-Times report.
Not to detract from the story itself, but did the Mexican flag feature an ice pick on it? Turn the beat around, my friend: A north suburban man has been charged with a hate crime for [allegedly, while we’re here] grabbing an ice pick out of his car during a traffic altercation and threatening a motorcyclist while yelling racist slurs about his presumed Mexican heritage Wednesday in Gurnee.
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Here’s the Tribune-owned Lake County News-Sun’s version:

A traffic altercation near Gurnee Wednesday morning led to a felony hate crime charge against a man from unincorporated Gurnee who attacked a motorcyclist with an ice pick while yelling “racial slurs and racial expletives,” according to the Lake County Sheriff’s Office.

Geez, they too omit an “allegedly” in their lead.
I mean, I’m sure it’s true that “[The man] denied the attack to deputies, but the motorcyclist provided a photo showing Zens wielding the ice pick, [a sheriff’s office spokesperson] said. Deputies, who spoke with Zens at his residence, also found an ice pick in his Hyundai, which corroborates the other man’s statement,” but still.
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Marijuana Mile
“Cannabis companies are eyeing sites on some of the priciest retail streets in Chicago, including the Magnificent Mile, as they get ready to sell recreational marijuana in Illinois,” the Tribune reports.
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Brown Town
I thought Jeans Day would run away with this, but then there were only 12 votes. I have to put more effort into these things instead of taking the easy, obvious routes.


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ChicagoReddit

Is anyone traveling to Kansas City or nearby this weekend, by chance? from r/chicago


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ChicagoGram

View this post on Instagram

#chicago #frontporch #painter #carpenter

A post shared by ErbGf (@rob_chico) on


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ChicagoTube
“Badge” / Dave Mason at City Winery on Wednesday night.

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BeachBook
Be our friend and maybe you’ll get gems like this in your news feed on days when the Facebook algorithm works even slightly to our favor!
Tourists In The Bronx.

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This Guy Makes Stunning Art Out Of Drywall.

Facebook is incredibly frustrating for our page for two reasons: One, just because you like or friend the page doesn’t mean Facebook is delivering every post to you. In fact, our most widely distributed posts tend to reach about 10 percent of our followers. Two, one reason for that is that when we post articles that already have wide distribution – like pieces from national news organizations – Facebook sends them out to far more of our followers than our original pieces or work that is fascinating or funny or just damn important but hasn’t had wide distribution already. Hence, the rich get richer, so to speak, and great work by smaller organizations and/or people gets smothered. THAT’S the real Facebook bias, and it drives me bonkers. (Also, the more folks interact with our pieces, the more of our pieces they’ll see, and the more widely they’ll be distributed to others, so even simply liking a post really helps.)
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TweetWood
A sampling of the delight and disgust you will find @BeachwoodReport.


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The Beachwood McRibTipLine: Freshmacher.

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Posted on August 15, 2019